Towards the end of last year, Peterborough United in the Community re-emerged as Peterborough United Foundation. This follows the successful application for charitable status which has taken over 6 months to achieve. The charitable status has been awarded following the Community departments involvement in providing services to the local community in a number of different activities and projects.

The department works as a not-for profit organisation, providing these activities, using the football club as a focal point, to people across the city, not only during school time but also providing evening activities to help meet the needs of the cluster of smaller communities making up our Greater Peterborough community.

Chief Executive Officer Bob Symns said: "This is a wonderful achievement and a sign of the hard work and dedication by our Community Department. We consider ourselves to be a hub of Sporting and Educational preference and will always be foremost in our future planning and long term ambitions".

Current Activities and Projects

Literacy Scheme: We have been delivering Literacy in Primary schools across the city. We deliver the scheme of work set by the school to achieve several learning objectives, basing all of the lesson plans around the football club. Healthy Kicking Scheme: We deliver school "healthy days" by sending in a coach to deliver sessions based around the importance of exercise and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Miss Dorothy Safety: The Miss Dorothy Safety Scheme is a story based education programme that teaches children valuable life skills which helps the schools to achieve Community cohesion in their Offsted. We have the support of the local fire and local police services when delivering this scheme.

Soccersight: We are delivering a coaching programme to blind and visually impaired children. We are hoping to expand this project to include hearing impaired children and eventually introduce this to adults.

Inclusion: We currently run evening sessions for girls and boys between the ages 11 and 18 in the east of the city. We are supported by a team of PCSO's, with the idea to reduce anti-social behaviour in this area of the city. We are looking to expand this to other areas of the city in the near future.

School Sports Programme: We are currently delivering a wide variety of sports in schools across the city as part of curriculum P.E and afterschool clubs. We see around 750 children regularly each week.

Duke of Edinburgh Award: We were one of the first Football League Clubs in the country who achieved being able to deliver the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award. In 2009 we got 30 students through the award, hopefully most of them will progress to doing the Silver award with us this year. This year, we are aiming to double the number of successful Bronze award candidates.